Henrico’s Challenger Day brings students baseball, inclusivity, and little moments of joy

More than 200 Henrico Schools students gathered at Tuckahoe Park on Oct. 15 for one of their favorite days of the year: Challenger Day, an annual field trip that introduces adaptive sports to students with disabilities. 

This year marks the 11th year of Henrico’s Challenger Day, which started with around 90 students and has grown to 260. Elementary-schoolers from more than 35 self-contained classrooms – classes for students with disabilities that are separate from general education classes – joined their classmates for various activities including baseball, field games, face painting, arts and crafts, and interacting with therapy dogs.

David Newton, the president of local baseball organization Tuckahoe Sports, which helped to found the event, said that one teacher told him, “This is the most fun day, this is the thing we look forward to every year.”

“There’s a lot of moving parts to making this work, but to get the kids out of the classroom, let them get out in a fun social situation, it’s been really great,” Newton said. “That’s been the biggest thing, is to see these kids. They’ll be so worn out by the end, most of them go to sleep on the buses back to school.”

Challenger Day is primarily sponsored by Tuckahoe Sports and the Henrico Education Foundation, but also brings in funding and volunteers from Henrico Recreation and Parks, Tuckahoe Little League, and HCPS. 

The event was made possible after Tuckahoe Sports and the county helped construct Challenger Field in 2008, an adaptive baseball field that includes rubberized surfaces for students in wheelchairs, visual curb stops for students with visual impairments, and other adaptations for students with autism or sensory issues.

The field is “one of a kind” in the Richmond area, Newton said, and was the main inspiration behind the Challenger Day event.

“Years ago, a friend of mine goes, ‘We got this Challenger Field here, and we don’t utilize it enough. We ought to do something with Henrico County to utilize the field for all of the kids,’” said Newton. “So I’m sitting at Chick-Fil-A at Short Pump one day, and his wife and him sit down at my table and go, ‘We have a proposition for you. Let’s do a big Challenger Day with Henrico County.’”

Teachers and volunteers aim to ensure every student is included in the activities, no matter the physical or cognitive disability. Adaptive P.E. teachers have even created an apparatus to help students with limited mobility swing a bat and constructed a sensory tent for students with autism.

“It gives them an experience with sports, obviously, but it also gives them that real-world, out-of-the-classroom kind of social experience,” said Erin Daniel, a program officer with HEF.

Many Henrico high school students come out to help volunteer with the event. Maleez Sarpong, a student at Glen Allen High School and a member of the Building a Culture of Kindness club, said her favorite part of the day is the little moments of joy she sees in the kids when they hit a ball off a tee or blow bubbles with their friends.

“They get excited about the littlest things, things that you don’t even think about,” she said. “Them getting excited about the bubbles and the balloons and the baseball, it was just bringing me back to when I was younger, and how I used to get excited about having the opportunity to do these things.”

When everyone can participate, everyone gets to experience the joy, she said, and moments or activities that may seem insignificant become very meaningful for the students and teachers involved.

“They don’t feel a sense that they’re not like everyone else,” Sarpong said. “They can get the opportunity to do the fun things that they see other people doing. I feel like it brings a type of joy.”

Liana Hardy is the Citizen’s government and education reporter. Support her work and articles like this one by making a contribution to the Citizen.